Latest / Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce / 194. Nervous System Regulation After Divorce: The Key to Rebuilding Confidence & Intuition

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194. Nervous System Regulation After Divorce: The Key to Rebuilding Confidence & Intuition · Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce

• 0:49
  Speaker 1: It is January 2nd and I cannot think of another week of the year where we are less grounded from the haze of the holidays.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: So happy New Year to you.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: This episode is a re-release from late last year, but that is one that will help you get grounded and move into the new year with more purpose and more power, and I will see you next week for our launch of Season 4.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: I cannot wait, hi love.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Dear Divorce Diary, the podcast helping divorcees go beyond talk therapy to process your grief, find the healing you crave and build back your confidence.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, dawn Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer and divorcee.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Women who do a body scan on a daily basis or multiple times a day heal their divorce grief much faster than the women who do not.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: In today's episode, we are going to talk about what a body scan is and the importance of building in the habit of body scanning, as well as what not to do immediately after you do a body scan.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: All right, what is a body scan?
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: It is the process of slowing down, taking some breaths and doing what I call dropping in.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Right, I didn't make that up.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: That's a term, it's a phrase.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: People use it, the people who are doing the healing thing.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: So when you take a few breaths and you actively and intentionally connect with what's going on in your body.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Now, some of the most important times that you can do this is when your mind is going very, very fast or when you're feeling distress or you're experiencing a trigger or things right.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Moving fast is like the best way I can sort of articulate that.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Can you sort of sense with me what the essence of things going too fast feels like in your body?
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: So if you take a big deep breath now and drop into your body and start to notice what's happening, how fast are you going?
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: How present are you?
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: The skill of quote, unquote, dropping into your body is sort of the key to nervous system health, emotionally processing, getting grounded, being able to be in touch with your intuition and your highest self, your interior wisdom.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: But so often we move through the day disconnected from our bodies, largely because we're just going so fast all the time.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: And so it's really really important and valuable to build in the habit of intentionally dropping into your body and doing a body scan from the top of your head all the way and intentionally down through.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: You could think of it as the chakras right From your third eye to your throat chakra, to your heart chakra, to your solar plexus, to your sacral, to your root chakra, you know.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Or you could just think of it as all of your body systems, from the tippy top of your head down to the soles of your feet and taking the time to notice what's happening and any sensations that you're in touch with.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Is there stress?
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Is there?
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Tension, is there?
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Buzzing, is there?
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Heat?
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: Is there?
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Openness, is there?
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Space, is there?
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: What is there?
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: And anytime your mind is racing and you feel yourself escalating.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: These are the most beautiful times to slow down and to drop into your body.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: It can be easier to do sometimes when you use an essential oil which we've certainly talked about in other episodes, smelling something like coffee grounds or lavender.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: When you put certain essential oils on the bottoms of your feet, it really helps.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: With grounding, for the last couple of months I've been using a grounding mat underneath my desk, but these things help you sort of be more body aware and body centered right so that you can prioritize feeling over thinking.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: A body scan is always going to help you be in touch with what you're feeling so that you can process and release, because when you're thinking, you're not processing and releasing in the same coherent, cohesive, entire body system way.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Now, when you drop into your body and you start to feel what's there, your mind is going to have all sorts of opinions and feedback about what you should do or not do with the things that you are feeling.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: I think it's really really important to know that when you're feeling, that's not the time to make decisions or a bunch of interpretations about what you're feeling.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: The point of the exercise is to feel and to process is to feel and to process.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: It's beautiful that when you're doing a body scan, you emphasize your breath and expanding your breath into the corners of your body.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: It's a beautiful opportunity to do a few segments of EFT tapping.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: There doesn't have to even be a topic.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: You can just go through the tapping points for the purpose of moving the energy through your body.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: You could do some butterfly tapping, but again, not for the purpose of fixing or solving anything or understanding anything or deciding anything.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Literally for the purpose of just creating space for the energy that is within and to give it a path to move out.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Remember, energy cannot be created or destroyed.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: It can only be transmuted.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: So by dropping into your body and breathing through it, you are in the process of alchemizing or transmuting the energy that is in your body.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: And when we are simply thinking about our pain, we are not actually transmuting our pain.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: And when we are simply thinking about our pain, we are not actually transmuting our pain.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: So this body scan process is very much a way for you to get grounded in your nervous system, to process and transmute or alchemize what you're feeling in your body and to make choices from a wiser place.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: But the caution is right.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: After a body scan, that is not the time typically to make decisions.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: After a body scan, that is not the time typically to make decisions.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: When you have allowed yourself to feel a bunch of feelings, there is a process you know, like when you work out and your metabolism is burning more calories right after the workout, right, it's like let those feelings take their natural course.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: So when you drop into the body and you give yourself space to do this, it's not necessarily the time right after to make big decisions.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: And I want to validate for you that dissociation, compartmentalizing, those are very, very important tools and there's a time and a place for all of them.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: There's a time and a place for a body scan and there's a time and a place for dissociation or compartmentalization.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: And so if you've gone through something today where it was not appropriate for you to drop into your body and process what you're feeling, that's okay.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: But then circle back to this and then do it in a time where you can give yourself the space to let those feelings chart their full course and then, when you feel like you've sort of gotten to a place where you can stand up and move forward and not feel so so, so much, then you can start to approach problem solving or interpreting or creating a next step.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: So there is a time and a place for a body scan.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: But the more often you do it now, the easier it will be to do it consistently and with ease later.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: And so we have to kind of put those reps in now.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: It's going to feel awkward, it's going to feel uncomfortable, it's going to feel like there's no great time to do it, because in the morning you got to get out the door and in the middle of the day everybody at work needs things from you.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: And then in the afternoon you got a million phone calls to return before you have to do the evening things.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: And then in the evening it's like you don't want to get yourself all wound up before you go to sleep, and so there's always going to be a reason to not body scan in the beginning.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: But the more you do it, the more space you will feel in your body, the easier it will be to process emotions and the more room you'll be making for joy in your life.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Love, today we talked about the value of a body scan and why it helps heal divorce grief faster, because energy cannot be created or destroyed.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: It can only be transmuted or alchemized, and just thinking about our pain does not transmute the pain.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Love.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: So this is your call to action to practice the body scan and if you have not checked out yet our premium track, which is a very specific sort of quasi-meditational track for me, to hold space for you while you drop into your body and process whatever it is you're Dear Divorce Diary, is a podcast by my coach, dawn.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: You can find more at mycoachdawncom.